Unfollowing On Facebook

Over the last few weeks I’ve unfollowed 3 people on Facebook. I’m still officially friends with them as I wasn’t looking to cause offence. I don’t really want a lot to do with these people, but neither do I want any awkwardness. Maybe that’s a bit cowardly, but I unfollowed them because I didn’t want to be exposed to things that I didn’t like to reduce my stress levels.

One had been brewing for a while, but the sharing of the nonsense around ‘using a pen’ for voting as a serious post, was the last straw for me. Another shared a petition against the BBC. I do think there has been a lot of uncalled for BBC bashing, but it wasn’t the petition that I objected to so much. She seemed to have some friends who turned it into a bit of a bigoted discussion about the referendum and she did nothing to counter it. I was a bit disappointed and decided to call it a day, although maybe I was a bit harsh.

The other was someone who I thought was a nice, tolerant person, partly because they had health issues that I thought might make them more accepting of others. It didn’t seem to be the case post-referendum sadly, so I cut the news feed.

I’m a bit sad to do this in a way. It’s not that I have any objection to seeing differing points of view, far from it. If someone believes in something and can say why in a way that isn’t bigoted, then I have no issue with that. I have been sorry to see so much prejudiced stuff, but I guess I should count myself lucky that I have only had 3 people in my news feed that I take issue with. This seems pretty good when you consider I have a few hundred friends on Facebook. It also feels pretty good compared to my American cousin’s posts about things like gun control and gay rights. He gets a lot of nonsense said back to him and I find some of it offensive on his behalf.